Many feeling left behind in vaccine drive
The other day, Sharon Gillenwater made an early morning trip to the Moscone Center vaccination center. She didn’t have an appointment for the vaccine — at 55 years old, she wasn’t eligible. But she really, really wanted one, and a friend of hers had done the same thing the day before, managed to get herself on a wait list and, later that night, got her first dose of the vaccine.
After an hour, though, the news wasn’t great: The list was full, the site was overwhelmed. So Gillenwater did what any rational person would do: “I drove straight to my doctor and got my shingles vaccine. I’m six years over
due.” At least it was a vaccine and, more critically, it meant that Gillenwater, who lives in Noe Valley, would have to wait at least two weeks before she could start hunting again for the coronavirus vaccine. Anything to take the edge off.
“A couple months ago I was perfectly happy to wait and my expectation was that I would be lucky to get it in July,” she said. But that was before her husband got a shot. And her three best friends. “It’s just messing with my head.”
About 43% of all eligible adults in San Francisco have had at least one shot; 20% are fully vaccinated. These figures can vary widely depending on the city, but even in East Palo Alto, the least vaccinated city, 1 in 4 adults has had at least one shot. That’s great for the people who have received the vaccine — but for those still waiting, even as everyone around them gets theirs, a certain sort of “vaccine FOMO,” or “fear of missing out,” has started to set in.
“I don’t think I’ve ever really understood the concept of FOMO,” Gillenwater said. “It’s just such the topic. Anybody you talk to it’s all about who has gotten their shot. I’ve never been the person who feels left out of something like this.
“It’s all about managing your own expectations. But that’s been really surprisingly hard to do.”
It won’t be long before Gillenwater is eligible. Come Thursday, anybody 50 years old and older in California will be able to sign up for the vaccine. Two weeks later, that’ll expand again to anybody over the age of 16. In the meantime, though, all she, like so many others, can do is wait.
“It’s a lucky thing. It’s a good thing,” says Shubhi Nigam, a South of Market resident, as she explains how most of her friends have already been vaccinated. That means they’re safe, and it means she’s safer, too. “Because they’re vaccinated, I feel good about seeing them — but also there’s a little bit of vaccine FOMO.”
Waiting patiently is one thing when you’re waiting with everybody else, she says. It’s harder when everybody around you seems to be posting vaxxies (vaccine selfies). There’s a sense of selfdoubt that starts to creep in. “Am I not trying hard enough to get it? Should I be calling 50 pharmacies up every day?” But no, she says, “You can’t let yourself get frustrated. It’s just a matter of luck.”
Hopefully, Nigam says, she’ll be fully vaccinated for the summer. First things first: Visiting her family in India. “I haven’t been able to see them for a really, really long time.” And after that, rescheduling last year’s birthday parties. “We all turned 30 last year, and all of our birthdays kind of got shelved.”
For some, there’s a certain pressure not to hold up everybody else’s return to normal. Right now Josh Steinfeld, 42, is the odd man out. His wife, Marissa Hockfield, is vaccinated (she’s an educator) and so are their parents and extended family. “So we’re really just waiting on me.”
Once he’s been vaccinated, they can finally go see family in other states — hers in New Mexico, his in New Jersey.
“Would you go to Austin without me?” he asks his wife, sort of laughing as he says it.
“I think if it took you a really long time to get vaccinated … I would probably go without you because we haven’t seen my parents in a year,” she says. Then again her parents have offered to come to San Francisco. “But that means I won’t see my sister, brotherinlaw and 3yearold nephew.”
“And they’re vaccinated.” So much of the wait is about what comes after: a whole world of possibilities — even if they’re not particularly flashy ones.
Gillenwater wants to see her friends again, maybe have them over for a dinner party, go see a play and eventually, one day, stop getting a mask caught around her earrings.
Rob Cocks, 45, imagines big things like going to the gym or sipping a cup of coffee inside a cafe. “Having a meal with my friends without a jacket on,” he says, like he’s going down a list. “Being able to smile at somebody as I pass them.”
He was fine waiting his turn, but the wait got a little harder after he was the lone adult in the family yet to be vaccinated. “The feeling is that after a year of this stuff, I sort of see some light at the end of the tunnel and I feel like there could be a little semblance of normalcy. I could accept a dinner invitation — or maybe I could do something crazy like give somebody a hug.”
Cocks, who lives in San Francisco, had been trying for days to register as a vaccine site volunteer — to help out, of course, but also because volunteers become eligible for the vaccine after a shift. It’s one of the few ethical shortcuts for someone his age. As of last Tuesday, he wasn’t having any luck. But then the next day he sent a message: “Full disclosure my volunteer paperwork did go thru so may be volunteering Saturday and on the vaccination trail.” And a few days after that, another message, this one a picture of his vaccination card. He’d spent a day volunteering and at the end of the shift, they asked him if he’d like a shot of his own.
Last week, Erich Valo’s wife managed to schedule her first dose of the vaccine. His parents have had it, so have hers, so that left him the last man standing. The Oakland resident was sanguine about the situation. “I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything right now,” he said. “Although there is still that feeling of that, ‘Oh this summer could be a vaccinated summer,’ there is that feeling that the end is in sight.” He didn’t really imagine that being the case as recently as this past December.
That night he drove his wife to the appointment — “she hates driving.” As she was signing in he asked if there might be an extra dose lying around.
No luck. But then, during that 15minute observation window, as he and his wife waited, a nurse came up to him. “Looks like we’re going to have some,” she said.
“My heart rate was definitely going when I was getting the vaccine. I was super excited,” he says. “Now it’s exciting looking to the future.”
He’s looking forward to getting back to work as a photographer and thinking about a little road trip with the family and maybe a trip to Krispy Kreme, where they’re offering free donuts with proof of vaccinations.
First, he just has to wait for his second shot. And then two weeks after that.